Custom-made costumes for all performance genres

Monthly Archives: September 2014

The tutu-making year has slowed down just a little and before it picks up again I thought I’d put together a little ready to wear tutu. During the year ideas for tutus come to me when I’m discussing tutus with clients. Lots of ideas are discarded but sometimes an idea just sticks in my head for later. The Phantom ice skating dress was made from a beautiful buttery cream lycra and I thought it would team beautifully with a small piece of French lace I had stashed away from Recherche Dance Fabrics.

Cream lycra and yellow beaded lace

The colours were so beautiful together but still fresh and uncomplicated. I thought it would be lovely for a young dancer and just bit different from the usual pastels. I teamed it with an ivory skirt with a layer of glimmer tulle and a layer of lemon for subtle shifts of sparkle and colour. The bottom layers were white. I dagged the net edges for a softer blend of colours.

ivory to lemon and through to white

I cut around each of the individual motifs on the lace and had about a dozen of 2 shapes. There were very few mirror images so I had to plan out embellishment that would work with repetitions of the same shape. You can see there was a lot of playing around before I decided on a design I liked. They are all pretty so I just picked the one that appealed the most.

applique arrangement 1

applique arrangement 2

applique arrangement 3

I decided on the following one. In the pictures, you can just see the layer of ballet net with a central ellipse cut out to match the hip line of the skirt.

final design

There’s a bit of fiddling with the appliques to have them fit around the ellipse; a true circle is much easier, but dancers are elliptical in cross-section!

pinned motif

Here the net plate is much easier to see. Once the applique was sewn on I trimmed the net around the inner and outer edge of the applique so I had a sort of wreath of appliques. I usually use my darning foot with the feed-dogs down to sew this type of lace to the plate but my regular sewing machine was away for its annual check-up; thimble thread and needle served me well though.

bodice decoration

I decorated the bodice with the few small pieces of mirror image pieces from the scalloped edge of the lace and augmented it with a little hand-beading. I love these little flower shaped sequins. The opalescent pink and cream was perfect!

hand beading

I added a couple of faceted AB acrylic beads as a focal point to the bodice.

bodice detail

The tutu went together beautifully. The warm cream tones are enhanced by the glimmer of the sparkle tulle in the second layer and the lemon net is warmed by the ivory top layer. Photos never quite capture the essence though.